


Changeling

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [13]
Category: Far Cry 5, Far Cry: New Dawn
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Animal Abuse, Blood, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Drama, F/M, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Semi-Graphic Miscarriage, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence, implied brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 07:03:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17803286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Rook never took to Ethan.**Spoilers for New Dawn,Mind the warnings.





	Changeling

**Author's Note:**

> i binged this game over literally twelve (12) hours straight. i've been awake since nine AM Valentine's day. 
> 
> SO ENJOY THIS THING I WROTE ON LITERALLY NO SLEEP

For all that Joseph had changed her, Rook never took to his ‘son’.  
  
He was eight when they emerged from the bunker; nine when he actually started calling Joseph ‘Father’. Rook was never ‘mother’ to him- he had enough memories of his true mother that she wouldn’t have taken it as a snub under normal circumstances.  
  
But it _was_ a snub.  
  
Rook said nothing to Joseph. He would perceive it as jealousy (as _Envy_ ) and it wasn’t sin that drove her discontent with his adopted son. If she had perceived Ethan’s resistance to her as a childish sort of rebellion, made of grief from his true mother and an affectionate sort of possessiveness over a new father (where he’d never had one before), then Rook would have been sympathetic and patient; but she saw through this boy, and what she saw was not impulsive, childish expressions of pain.  
  
Ethan was _cold._  
  
In the early days of New Eden, when they were carving civilization from stone and dirt, Ethan spent his time following Joseph around. And when instructed to assist in the work in what ways he could, Ethan was resistant: ‘Why do I have to do it? Why can’t _they_ do it instead? I don’t want to. I’m tired.’  
  
Joseph suggested calmly, quietly as they ate the next night, that Ethan struggled with Sloth and would need a firm but gentle hand to guide him onto the right path. “All must do their share, Ethan,” He’d said in that soft, hypnotic voice that had once driven Rook to madness in Dutch’s bunker. “Including you. This is how a good society functions: When all members share the load.”  
  
Instead of pouting, Ethan’s posture had relaxed. “Of course, Father,” He’d said calmly. “I will carry my load.”  
  
_Bull-shit you will_ , the old Deputy Rook snapped from the recesses of Rook’s mind. Rook tried to temper her, tried to keep Joseph’s word in her heart so that she might not give into Wrath and Pride again.  
  
But Old Deputy Rook was smugly satisfied when they found, a few days later, that Ethan had sneakily bargained with a few other children (she couldn’t call them friends, he didn’t seem to have _friends_ in the true sense of the word) to do his chores in exchange for some trinkets, some leftover food.  
  
Rook told Joseph. Not because she was trying to be mean, not because she held a _grudge_ , per se, but because it frustrated and offended her that Ethan would try to dodge work when the rest of New Eden had to do so tirelessly to make a community for them. It had taken forever to find land that was suitably arable, land that wouldn’t be too difficult to clear out and build on; and the scramble to prepare for the seasons was maddening for someone who had never done in before.  
  
No. Ethan should not be permitted to escape his chores. He had to learn if he was going to survive in this new era of theirs.  
  
Later, after Joseph had chastised Ethan for his Sloth, after she’d caught a positively venomous glare slipped her way when Joseph wasn’t looking, Rook would eventually figure out that this had been her (entirely unintentional) declaration of war.  
  
Or at least, that was how Ethan saw it.  
  
He expressed it by doing things such as ‘accidentally’ sticking out his foot as he and Rook were walking down a steep path. “I’m _really_ sorry,” Ethan had said as Joseph cleaned Rook’s bloodied nose and split lip. “It was an accident.” He repeated that about four times: But Rook didn’t need such an obvious tell to know he was lying. His facial expression, his tone- it was painfully obvious to her that Ethan had tripped her on purpose.  
  
Then there was the day Rook had gotten dressed only for her skin to puff up in hives mere minutes after the clothing came into contact with her skin. The rashes were distinct- they came from a common plant in the area that she suspected was a mutated (and aggravatingly powerful) form of poison ivy. But the clothing had been washed the day before, and there was no plausible explanation for how poison ivy would have found its way _into_ her clothing, rather than on the exterior.  
  
After she caught sight of Ethan’s red, puffy hands, the mystery was solved.  
  
Rook debated speaking with Joseph about it. She didn’t have concrete proof of Ethan’s guilt- and even if she did, she suspected that Joseph would handle it the way he handled everything with Ethan: By speaking calmly and firmly with him, and insisting to Rook that Ethan was a child and needed to be taught the right way to behave. Besides, apart from the tripping incident, most of Ethan’s petty little attacks were aggravating, but harmless.  
  
And so, for a long time, she kept her peace.  
  
Until a day when she couldn’t anymore.  
  
Rook didn’t like the wastelands, the charred dirt and dead trees in the areas they suspected were irradiated. She didn’t like the stark, ugly reality when the past had been so beautiful. The Whitetails had been such a gorgeous place, one she’d become intimately familiar with, and it pained her to recognize a location and see how it had been devastated.  
  
The children of New Eden were, of course, a curious bunch. The ones under thirteen or fourteen years old had little to no memory of a time before the steel bunkers that had protected them from God’s righteous fire, and nature- the beautiful and the ruined- was fascinating to them. So it was as popular a gathering spot for them outside of New Eden as it was forbidden. “They’ve gone off again,” Simone remarked, clucking her tongue. “We’ll be lucky if any of them can have children of their own someday.”  
  
_You joke, but that might be a problem down the road._ “I’ll go get them,” Rook offered, putting down the last of the clothes she’d been washing and heading off towards the scorched wasteland.  
  
As it happened, on her way there she ran across most of the children she’d expected to find.  
  
Most.  
  
“Where’s Ethan?”  
  
Mary, one of the oldest of the group at thirteen, hesitated and exchanged looks with the others. Rook would call their expressions troubled. “He’s back there,” Mary said finally, turning to point back at the wastelands. “He found a dog.” She took her sister, Rebecca, by the hand and started pulling her back towards New Eden.  
  
Rook thought to ask her what she meant by that; instead, she let them go and continued on to find Ethan.  
  
She heard the wild, pained yelping first; it did sound just like a dog, and Rook quickened her step. There were many stray and feral dogs wandering around, and most of them were not friendly- most were starving, in fact, and would gladly take a chunk out of anyone that passed them by. That was what Rook was worried about as she climbed to the top of the hill, and so when she came to a stop and looked down the incline and saw Ethan with a dog-  
  
“ _Ethan!_ ”  
  
The small knife he was holding (many in New Eden carried them for self-defense) fell from his hand. He lost his grip on the dog, which turned and bolted away. “Judge-”  
  
“What the hell were you _doing?_ ” Old Rook slipped out there- Joseph would not approve of ‘what the hell’.  
  
“It had a scaly patch on its side,” Ethan said. “I was trying to cut it off.”  
  
Rook’s mouth was hanging open, and the half-explanation only made it drop wider. “Ethan,” She said, trying to sound stern even as her voice shook and she stepped forward to snatch the knife from his hand. “You were trying to cut its _skin_ off. You were hurting it. I could hear how much pain it was in from yards off!”  
  
“It’s just a feral,” Ethan grumbled. “Who cares?”  
  
“ _I_ care,” Rook snapped, fingers digging into the warm grip of the knife. “You were needlessly causing an animal pain. Are you even sure it was a wild dog and not some lost pet?”  
  
“I don’t _know_ ,” Ethan said, with all of the snappy sarcasm Rook would sooner associate with a pre-teen talking about homework or friends or parental inquiries- not to a question about why he was attempting to _carve the skin off a dog._ She remembered, spontaneously, a story she’d read years ago about how someone had set a cat’s tail on fire; they’d given some idiotic defense of ‘I didn’t realize it would hurt it’, like setting skin and bone and muscle on fire wouldn’t _hurt._ Ethan might be young, but he wasn’t stupid: He was certainly smart enough to know that those were the cries of an animal in pain.  
  
For the first time, Rook was good and properly _shaken_ , and she resolved to talk to Joseph.  
  
It was difficult to find a private moment, with Joseph’s time so highly demanded by his followers. The only place she knew she would definitely meet with him in any semblance of privacy was bed. They always slept together in the same space, under the same blanket; but sometimes Joseph pushed her thighs apart and made love to her. Rook would press a hand over her mouth and dig her nails into Joseph’s back while he moved, desperate not to make any obvious sounds. To avoid this complication, sometimes when they had a free moment Joseph would urge her into the forest, to a secluded spot where they could moan and cry out without being overheard.  
  
Tonight, it was Rook who leaned over to Joseph during dinner and suggested going for a ‘walk’ afterwards.  
  
“That sounds like a lovely idea,” Joseph responded, fingers ghosting gently over her own.  
  
“Why do you go on so many walks?” Ethan asked loudly. His brow narrowed a mite more when he redirected his gaze from Joseph to Rook.  
  
Joseph smiled. “That’s a secret you’ll only be able to learn when you are much, _much_ older, my child.”  
  
If anything, Ethan’s glare deepened.  
  
_If anyone here is guilty of Envy,_ Rook considered, _It would be him._ He seemed to resent every moment she took Joseph away from him.  
  
In fairness, Rook was a sinner too; it was a sin that she felt a little stab of satisfaction when she and Joseph went for their walk, blanket under arm, a little smug over Ethan being denied yet another chance to monopolize Joseph’s time. Old Rook wouldn’t have called it a sin- she would have called competing with a ten year-old for his adopted father’s attention pathetic.  
  
But once they’d put an appropriate distance between themselves and New Eden, once they’d found a place appropriately secluded, once they’d removed their clothes and fitted themselves together the way they had so many times before, it was easy enough to forget about the unpleasant business Rook would have to mention on the way home. For a time she just stared at the sky, sinking pleasantly into the warmth of Joseph’s body around her and the pleasure he was giving her.  
  
“Have I ever mentioned how good you are at this?” Rook slurred after a surprisingly powerful orgasm.  
  
Joseph chuckled against her neck. “At the risk of sounding arrogant, you’ve never given me reason to suspect otherwise.”  
  
They pulled on enough clothing to be decent if someone were to run across them and laid down on the blanket for a while. The sky had, in the wake of the Collapse, taken on a strange aurora borealis effect in both day and night, but night was when it was the most stunning. Rook let the calm linger for a few minutes, wondering how she should broach the subject.  
  
Joseph beat her to it.  
  
“I heard something,” He remarked softly, “About Ethan and a dog today? I felt that something was bothering you, and I suspect it’s this.”  
  
_Goddamn, he really is psychic._  
  
Rook shook away that particularly blasphemous thought as though swatting a mosquito. “He claims he was trying to cut a scaly part off of its side. I heard the thing barking in pain when I was trying to find him, Joseph. He tried to cut a swath of its _skin_ off. And… If this were the _only_ thing,” Rook began carefully, “I could let it go- I could give him the benefit of the doubt, like maybe he didn’t understand he was hurting it. But… There’s a _pattern_ forming here, Joseph. I don’t think I have to tell you that Ethan struggles with being honest, and I just-”  
  
“Rook.”  
  
“-he’s also been rough with his playmates- I can’t even necessarily call them his friends, because have you noticed that the other children don’t seek him out? He goes to them. He seeks them out and they keep their distance from him, almost like they’re _afraid_ of him.”  
  
“Rook.”  
  
Rook kept going, though- she couldn’t stop. Deputy Rook was taking over. “There’s this ongoing pattern of behavior that suggests that he doesn’t have a great capacity for empathy, Joseph, and I know that doesn’t always mesh with how you see the world, but when someone doesn’t have a great deal of empathy for _anyone_ and they display this pattern of behavior I start to get worried that-”  
  
“ _Ava_.”  
  
That got Rook’s attention. Joseph rarely called her by her given name; it was just the habit they’d fallen into over the years. Hearing him say ‘Ava’ was like hearing her mother calling her by her full name, an indicator of how serious he was.  
  
“I agree.”  
  
Rook’s eyes widened. “You do?”  
  
“Yes.” Joseph stared at a point over her shoulder for a moment, fingers lightly brushing over the small strip of blanket between them. “He and I- there was an incident the other day. At the tree.”  
  
Ethan and Rook, as Joseph’s adopted son and (for all intent and purpose) wife, were two of only a small number of people who had seen the tree that had grown at the old dam. It was a beautiful and slightly frightening sight that’s shook her right down to Old Rook, the skeptic that still didn’t believe that Joseph was a prophet. It was curiously, eerily biblical, an apple tree popping up in New Eden. “What happened at the tree?”  
  
Joseph met her eyes again. Rook was one of the few people that could detect the subtleties of his moods, and now she was seeing something… Almost like _fear_ in them. “He wanted an apple; I told him no. He asked why; I told him it was far too dangerous for him to take one. He asked if he could have one when he was older; I told him no, that I valued his safety too much to let him.” There was a long pause. Joseph was having trouble maintaining eye-contact, which was never a problem for him. Finally he said, “He looked at me, Ava, and his eyes were so… _Cold_.” He bunched his fingers in the blanket. “He looked me in the eye and said that I was an old man, and that he would take an apple when I was dead.”  
  
Rook’s mouth fell open with an even greater horror than it had when she’d caught Ethan with the dog. Aggression and resentment towards her, towards work and chores, towards his playmates- that was all par for the course. But she had _never_ heard or seen Ethan display such blatantly rude or cold behavior towards Joseph before. Joseph was his Father, the special person in his life that seemed to be immune from animosity or criticism. “ _Why?_ ”  
  
Joseph sighed. “He’s… Angry. Frustrated. He wants to be strong, but he doesn’t want to endure the physical, emotional, _spiritual_ hardships required to develop true strength. And you _are_ right: This is more than simply a frustrated child, or a child missing his mother. His behavior concerns me.”  
  
Rook waited for a follow-up- it didn’t come. “What do you mean to do?” In the days before the Collapse, this would be the time to call in a therapist and prepare one’s self for the inevitable diagnosis of something that had a very slim recovery rate. Nowadays they had limited options to deal with a child of Ethan’s type.  
  
“I’ll have to counsel him,” Joseph sighed. “I’ll pull him closer, try to… Fixate his mind on the right path. If sin drives him to darkness, I must guide him back to the light.”  
  
Joseph called it sin; all of these behaviors stemmed from sin.  
  
Rook, with her Deputy’s eye, saw the red flags that signaled something more sinister than simple human nature.  
  
_Lack of empathy, for humans and animals._  
  
_A talent for manipulation._  
  
_Chronic irresponsibility._  
  
_Emotionally immature, but otherwise highly intelligent._  
  
_A charming façade that comes and goes depending on the situation._  
  
_Violent tendencies._  
  
Rook saw the signs, and they chilled her.  
  
It would have been simple if it were just a matter of _sin_. Sin implied choice. Sin implied a conscious decision to behave a certain way.  
  
Rook didn’t think it was sin.  
  
She was pretty sure it was just Ethan.  
  
True to his word, Joseph pulled Ethan closer over the next couple of years. With no viable alternatives, his attempts at guiding his son towards better behavior was their only choice right now, and so Rook made a point of trying not to aggravate the process. She stayed out of Ethan’s way when she could, and tried to keep the peace with him when she couldn’t.  
  
And for a time, things seemed better.  
  
For a while, anyway.  
  
Ethan’s interactions with Rook became more civil; proportionately, they also became less genuine. Every conversation felt like a forced event, like when her parents had made her talk with her aunts and uncles at family gatherings. It was certainly better than what it had been before- especially since those ‘pranks’ had stopped- but Rook was uneasily certain that it wouldn’t last.  
  
And as usual, she was right.  
  
With the increased civility came a new fluency in Joseph’s unique religious-speak. Ethan began to get in more theological discussions- with Joseph, with Rook, with anyone who would tolerate him (and most did, if only to avoid provoking him).  
  
One day Rook found herself alone with Ethan in the building that functioned as the main hall.  
  
“Sin is pervasive, isn’t it?”  
  
Rook paused. She’d been in the process of carving and smoothening a piece of wood for the altar, and Ethan had been silent for the forty-five minutes he’d been there. Why start talking now? “Yes,” She agreed warily, “It is.”  
  
“Can one ever truly be free of it?”  
  
Rook considered the question. It almost sounded like a trap. “We do our best,” She said ambiguously. “Some people struggle more than others.”  
  
A pause.  
  
“Did you?”  
  
Rook froze; she began to feel a little sick. She never discussed the explicit details of her various sins with anyone but Joseph- Joseph, who had forgiven her; Joseph, who’d brought her into his new family. And she did not want to discuss them with Ethan. “I did.”  
  
“What were your sins?”  
  
“Pride and Wrath.” Rook hoped the short sentences would clue him in that she didn’t want to discuss this.  
  
They didn’t. “But what, specifically, did you do to be labeled with those sins?”  
  
Rook’s hands began to shake. With anyone else she might have given them a hint, if only to be polite. But she didn’t want to talk about her role in the Collapse with Ethan, with a boy that she couldn’t trust not to use it against her later. “I don’t want to talk about it, Ethan.”  
  
“Wrath suggests that you harmed someone, probably physically. Pride suggests that you did something like-”  
  
Rook’s temper spiked, and her stomach lurched violently. “It’s not your business. Drop it.”  
  
“Why not?” Ethan had climbed to his feet. He was glaring at her, and his tone had become decidedly more aggressive. “What, you- you think because you sleep with Joseph that you don’t have to own your sins? That you don’t have to atone for them like the rest of us do?”  
  
Oh, this was a _rich_ claim from the boy who’d always been more than willing to slip and slide his way out of chores or work when it was convenient for him. “No,” Rook snapped, dropping the wood to the floor and looking up at him irritably, “I’m saying that I don’t owe _you_ , a twelve year-old child, an explanation for what I’ve done or haven’t done.  
  
**_BAM._**  
  
Ethan punched the wall, and Rook flinched.  
  
“You stand beside Joseph, effectively as his wife, and yet you hide your sin from us all. _You_ are spared the lectures of sin, _you_ are spared the scrutiny of your wrong-doings, and all because my father’s chosen you to be his whore!” Ethan roared.  
  
_John_ , Rook thought dizzily, scrambling backwards in a panic, _he’s just like John was in the bunker with Joey and I, when he stapled those skins to the table and banged things around and demanded we confess-_  
  
“ _ETHAN!_ ”  
  
Ethan and Rook both jumped.  
  
Joseph was standing in the doorway. He’d bellowed loud enough that the entire settlement could have heard it; they’d probably heard him down in Prosperity. It was a rare day indeed when Joseph Seed raised his voice in anger, and when he did, one paid attention.  
  
Or, in Rook’s case, stumbled outside and threw up.  
  
Ethan had, in that moment, invoked John Seed at his absolute worst. And the terrible thing was, the behavior had not been modeled for him in New Eden: Joseph had forgone the brutal ways of the past, forgone chasing down Collapse survivors and forcing them into the faith. He did not carve his followers’ sins into their chests, or subject them to intense training, or drown them in Bliss.  
  
So this behavior was Ethan, and only Ethan.  
  
And that was terrifying.  
  
“I wish that you would be calm,” Joseph said softly a week later when Rook was still experiencing random bouts of nausea and vomiting. She lay curled up on their pallet, his hand lightly massaging her back. “I’ve spoken to Ethan. I’ve told him he has no business demanding your confession, and even less business raising his voice to you the way he did.”  
  
Rook hesitated. Should she say anything? She wasn’t even sure yet.  
  
“I don’t think this is Ethan.”  
  
Joseph frowned, confused.  
  
“I’m, uh…” Rook blushed a little. “…Late.”  
  
Joseph stared, uncomprehending.  
  
Rook rolled her eyes. “My _period_ , Joseph. It’s late.”  
  
Joseph’s eyes widened. Then he smiled. “You think you might be…?”  
  
“I’m not completely sure. I can’t exactly run down to the store for a pregnancy test to confirm it.”  
  
“If you are, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”  
  
When Rook’s stomach began to round noticeably over the next month, one of the women in New Eden with some midwifery training examined her and confirmed it: Definitely pregnant.  
  
Joseph was beaming when he announced it; Rook kept her head down, uneasy with being the center of attention. She was hugged and kissed and congratulated by just about everyone-  
  
-including Ethan.  
  
“It’s great,” he said mildly, in the most wooden possible voice; it was the most he’d said to her since the incident in the hall. He was lucky that Joseph was so even-keeled: If Rook had ever yelled at her mother that way, or called her a whore, her father would have taken a belt to her. “Very great. I’m quite happy for you.”  
  
Obviously he wasn’t.  
  
Ethan was, in terms of maturity, beyond the age at which it would be normal for him to be jealous of a baby that wasn’t even born yet, hadn’t even had a chance to take any significant amount of Joseph’s attention away from him. At twelve he ought to have been dismissing it as an interesting occurrence- give or take, given their unusual circumstances. That being said, it wasn’t as though Rook hadn’t known about his intense attachment to Joseph; if Ethan could be bitter about her relationship with Joseph, then of course he would feel threatened by another child.  
  
Joseph, on the other hand, was on cloud nine. He was happier than Rook had ever seen him- the prospect of having a child had sent his spirits soaring. Joseph paid quite a bit of attention to her, checking on how she felt, staying close to her, even touching her more often. “I’m fine,” Rook said for the fiftieth time, swatting him away. “My back just hurts a little. That’s what happens when you have fifteen extra pounds on your stomach. Go away.”  
  
The idea that she would become a mother in a few short months was bewildering. Before the Collapse she had been completely focused on becoming a Deputy and Not Being Terrible at Her Job, so children had never been a thought; she’d barely had a sex life at all. After the Collapse she’d been almost convinced that she couldn’t even have children thanks to the radiation- it had taken almost ten years of sex with Joseph to produce a pregnancy, so maybe she wasn’t completely wrong.  
  
But despite the surprise of it, Rook was strangely at ease with the idea. Joseph… Well, his past was his past, as her past was her past. They had atoned, and the man he was now suggested that he would be a good father to their baby. Lord knew that he had the patience of a saint when it came to Ethan.  
  
To be fair, though things had been strained between them since his outburst in the hall, Ethan was being civil. He had not started any arguments with Rook about sin, though she suspected that was more from his father putting the actual fear of God into him than it was Ethan realizing he’d massively overstepped his bounds.  
  
His father’s whore; that’s how he viewed Rook.  
  
Surely Ethan wouldn’t distress himself over whether or not he’d hurt the feelings of a mere _whore._ Of course not.  
  
He hated Rook- he’d made that clear.  
  
And Rook, at that point, thought that she was close to hating him.  
  
Later, she would look back on it and realize she hadn’t known what _hate_ was.  
  
Nearly six months into her pregnancy, the three of them sat down to dinner together. Food was cooked communally and occasionally eaten communally as well, but sometimes they chose to eat more privately. Tonight it was Ethan who brought the food back from the fire, and he who handed it out to Joseph and Rook before sitting down with them.  
  
Rook noticed- and would remember later- the lingering look he’d given her as he’d handed her the bowl. He was nearly as difficult to read as Joseph now, something she hoped Joseph had unintentionally passed onto his son. She ignored the look and thanked him for the bowl, the picture of civility. They’d eaten silently until Joseph broke it, quietly inquiring into Ethan’s studies.  
  
As dinner progressed, Rook noticed that her stomach was starting to feel strange. She dismissed it at first, as her stomach had been an unpredictable mess for the last few months. But then the discomfort turned to nausea- the food seemed to _burn_ in her mouth, even- and then the nausea was accompanied by _pain_. “Are you alright?” Joseph asked, reaching out to touch her shoulder.  
  
Rook hesitated. Paranoia said that she was going into labor, but at not-even six months that couldn’t be possible. It was probably nothing- it had to be nothing. “I’m… Fine,” She said.  
  
“Lying is a sin,” Ethan offered quietly, earning him a sharp look from Joseph.  
  
Rook might have offered one of her own if the pain weren’t ratcheting up with alarming speed, especially in her stomach and pelvis. “I think we should get Greta,” Joseph suggested. “Ethan, could you?”  
  
“Of course, father.”  
  
Ethan left, and Joseph moved closer to Rook. “How bad is it?”  
  
“Bad,” Rook gasped, grabbing for his hand. She was having trouble breathing now from the pain of it.  
  
“Do you think you might be in labor?”  
  
“I don’t- _ah!_ ” There was a sharp stab of pain in her lower stomach before a rush of hot, sticky liquid rushed from her. Rook reached down to check-  
  
-her fingers came back with dark, clotted blood.  
  
“Oh no,” She moaned. “Oh no, no, no-”  
  
“Shh…” Joseph whispered, stroking her hair. “It’s alright, don’t panic, just try to keep breathing.”  
  
Easier said than done: Rook’s vision was getting spotty, and she was becoming increasingly light-headed. Footsteps sounded at the door, and Greta and Ethan appeared before her, Greta kneeling in front of Rook and Ethan stepping back and out of the way. Rook’s vision got darker and darker as the pain spiked, and eventually she passed out, blood pumping from her.  
  
Later, when she woke, she would remember with terrible clarity Ethan’s cold, _cold_ eyes boring into hers.  
  
It took nearly a month before Rook was up and about again. Joseph stayed with her much of the time, holding her, stroking her hair, singing to her on occasion. He was warm and this was a moment when she really did need comfort, and of anyone in this camp Joseph was the best-suited to give it. He described the baby’s funeral (Rook, still strictly bed-bound, could not attend) and assured Rook that she was with God, who loved her as much as her earthly parents would have, if not more. Occasionally his voice broke and she felt tears soaking her scalp. Rook drifted in and out, and Joseph was there more often than not.  
  
After the truck-crash during the Collapse, Rook had found herself in a similar state: A floating, disconnected sort of state. It had taken a week or two for her to come back to earth, after which she’d grieved the deaths of Whitehorse, Hudson, and Pratt. It took nearly that full month of recovery for her to reconnect to the world properly enough to understand: She’d lost her baby. She’d lost her daughter, who’d already been buried under Joseph’s supervision. And Rook had sobbed as violently now as she had in the bunker for her friends.  
  
“How did this happen?” Rook wailed. “I was so careful!”  
  
“Shh,” Joseph whispered, rocking her in his arms. “Shh. It’s not your fault.”  
  
Rook agonized over it- what had she done? Were there signs she hadn’t noticed, dismissed as the routine upsets of pregnancy?  
  
The memory of the miscarriage was burned into her brain.  
  
And the thing she remembered best was Ethan, glaring at her with those cold eyes as she passed out.  
  
Ethan, who was disgruntled at the prospect of a new little brother or sister.  
  
Ethan, who had responded to Rook’s mild insistence that she was fine by reminding her that ‘lying is a sin’.  
  
Ethan, who viewed her as a whore.  
  
Ethan, who had brought them dinner that night.  
  
Ethan, who’d tried to cut the skin off a dog and ignored its pained howls.  
  
Ethan, who had plenty of opportunity to slip something into the food as he had brought it to their hut.  
  
Rook knew, more than she knew her name, more than she knew _anything_ , that Ethan had done something to her. To her _baby._  
  
Even though she was able to get out of bed at about a month out from the miscarriage, her movements were slow and painful. Joseph insisted she not strain herself- he wasn’t entirely certain what Greta had done to stop the bleeding, but he didn’t want Rook undoing it by unnecessarily straining herself. So Rook made her trips to the latrine and to the kitchen only when necessary. She stayed in their home during the day doing lighter tasks, like mending clothing.  
  
One day, waiting in line for lunch, she found herself face-to-face with Ethan.  
  
He looked at her; she looked at him.  
  
“I’m sorry you lost your baby,” He said, head low- all with that same, wooden voice he’d had when he’d congratulated her on the pregnancy.  
  
Rook looked at him with cool eyes. “Are you?” She asked flatly.  
  
Ethan’s head jerked up, expression one of alarm. For a moment Rook felt a pulse of fear- had she misjudged? Had she assumed the worst without reason?- but then the truth set in: Ethan wasn’t alarmed because Rook had baselessly accused him of effectively murdering her baby- he was alarmed because he was guilty, he knew it, and he was _surprised_ that she’d figured it out.  
  
She may have only been a rookie when Hope County went to hell, but she knew a liar when she saw one.  
  
Rook turned and walked away.  
  
If she stayed, she was going to choke that little shit to death with her bare hands.  
  
“He did it.”  
  
Rook sat, staring straight out the door of the hut, hands bunched on her lap. Beside her, Joseph’s breathing had grown strained.  
  
“Ava,” He whispered. “I don’t think Ethan did anything to-”  
  
“I don’t care what you think,” Rook spat harshly. “I know what I know. And I don’t want him near me. The minute I’m well enough, I’m going on guard-duty. I’ll hunt. I’ll do whatever gets me out of this settlement and away from him. But I do not want Ethan near me. I’ll fucking kill him, Joseph.”  
  
Silence.  
  
Then, Joseph knelt down beside her. “Would you be away from me as well?”  
  
Rook turned and fixed him with a frigid look, the likes of which she hadn’t given him since those early days in the bunker. “If you’re keeping that little murderer around, then yeah, I’ll be going away from you too.”  
  
After a moment, Joseph pulled back.  
  
“You ought to be careful,” He advised quietly, “Not to fall into Wrath again. Sin will eat at your soul until there’s nothing left of it. It will consume you. Do not return to your role as Judge, Jury, and Executioner.”  
  
He stood up and left the hut, left her sitting there staring into space.  
_  
Judge, Jury, and Executioner._  
  
If Ethan was as horrifically, sinfully guilty as Rook knew him to be, he had better pray that God judged him kindly.  
  
Because if he ever found his father’s _whore_ in the position of being his Judge…  
  
Well.  
  
That might not end so well for him.  
   
-End

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this kind of took on a life of its own. I can't tell if I expanded on some of the disturbing behaviors I saw from Ethan in the game OR if I just turned him into a Rhoda Penmark-esque psychopath. 
> 
> Eh. I've done crazier things.
> 
> (I'm not gonna lie, that scene where you first meet him and he starts screaming about Joseph I was thinking "WOOP WOOP red flag, red flag, get out of the room, Cap, he's gonna take Joseph's rosary and choke you with it Cap.")


End file.
